Violent Delusions
by StarSteller
Summary: After House drives his car into Cuddy's home, he takes Nalo's strange offer - his leg back and a new life. But when Rachel gets sick, Cuddy manages to track him down, just when House realizes he's in over his head. Huddy, mostly.
1. P: Coming Down

**Disclaimer**: Don't own, don't profit. Also – am ignoring Season 8. Just because much of this planning comes from ages and ages ago, and it's been annoying enough to adapt to season 7 events, and I'm not going to do it for season 8 as well.

Finally – don't take medical advice from this. I'm just a lowly frosh.

**AN:** Am a busy student at a certain lovely Institvte. Expect me to update rarely. Maybe months and months between updates. As much as I enjoy writing stuff, I also enjoy sleeping at least six hours of day, getting two good meals per day, and not failing my classes. Because that would be bad.

Writing as I go, as usual, but I had the idea for this for a pretty long time already. This chapter's pretty choppy, but that's mostly because I didn't want to dwell for long on the setup. I'm not usually this choppy.

**Music**: (This section's generally completely irrelevant to the story, so feel free to skip. I'm mostly going to use it to promote awesome songs.)

While writing this, I mostly listened to: "Call Day", by ZdoggMD. It's hilarious. And awesome. And actually legally free.

* * *

><p><strong>Violent Delusions<strong>

by starsteller

* * *

><p><strong>Prologue: Coming Down (Coming Down)<strong>

* * *

><p>He's halfway to <em>there<em>, on his motorcycle, before he even realizes where he's heading, which meant that somewhere in his mind he knows that what he had just done was illegal.

_Well, no duh, you idiot_. He'd just run his car into his ex-girlfriend's house. Of course that was illegal. But he had been so angry, so fucking pissed off that he hadn't been thinking straight, hadn't been considering the consequences, hadn't thought about the possibility of jail or dismemberment or the fact that he's almost certainly going to lose his medical license over this. It hadn't been premeditated.

Yet he's making a beeline for the one person who could keep him out of jail.

* * *

><p>He's standing over Nalo's fancy-smancy printer-like device, waiting for it to spit out his new (fake) ID. Nalo is surrounded by computers, muttering and cursing under her breath, the way she always does when she's working with computers. "Where do you want to go?" she asks.<p>

"Somewhere with a bar. And a lot of hot women." He waves his hand dismissively. "Somewhere that's not here. Preferably not in this country"

Nalo looks up hesitantly – she's scared of him, he knows. (And she should be. He knows stuff that could easily get her killed. Not that he would tell, ever, but she didn't know that and he doesn't plan on letting her know.) "I…know people in Seattle. Research team. Therapeutic cloning. Something like that. They could fix…" She vaguely gestured toward his thigh. "I can get you a new identity..."

He doesn't even need time to think. "Seattle it is, then." He wonders if the police are after him yet, but he doesn't consider the option of not running, of turning himself in. He just wants to be as far away as possible before dawn breaks.

And he knows that Nalo can let him disappear.

* * *

><p>The woman who meets him at the airport is so thin that she appears to be nothing more than skin and bone. "I'm Dr. Mary Hawthorne. Call me Thorne," she says. "I'm assuming you're Dr. House."<p>

House nods, curtly. The Vicodin that Nalo gave him paled in comparison to the cramping caused by the uncomfortable airline seats, and now he's forced to lean awkwardly on the single crutch that's supposed to replace his cane. (It's too distinctive, Nalo had said.)

Thorne takes his luggage from him. "Nalo told me about you. I'm the surgeon."

He does a double-take – she doesn't look like a surgeon. She looks...for the lack of better words, too sick to be a surgeon. Not with her sallow skin, emaciated appearance, and the two large, L-shaped scars that surround her eyes. _Doctor, heal thyself_, he thinks, and then he has to suppress an ironic laugh. He's a cripple. _Doctor, heal thyself _was just a load of bull. There were some things that no one could heal. Like his leg.

Or perhaps, not like his leg.

Thorne's going on about something or another – bone marrow for stem cells, three months to grow the muscle, then the transplant, perhaps a (another) ketamine coma to reset his pain levels, if necessary. He doesn't care enough to pay attention, never mind interrupt, until she mentions something about Prialt. _Non-narcotic. _He doesn't want that.

"No. No intrathecal pumps."

"Okay. What about ketorolac?"

"You're a fucking idiot if you're going to prescribe that for long-term pain management."

She glances at him. "What do you want, then?"

He pauses before replying. "Vicodin."

"Okay." Not even a pause, but cool and business-like. She has to know about his history with Vicodin – Nalo knows and she would have told Thorne – but Thorne doesn't even blink an eye at his request. "Vicodin it is, then."

It's a while before either of them speak again.

It's during this time when House realizes how much his life's going to change. Nalo had given him a different name, a different identity, a different past, but the hacker couldn't give him a college degree, never mind a medical license. Thorne has promised to repair his leg, but she couldn't even repair herself.

And he, himself, with that stupid, idiotic, impulsive move, had made it impossible for him to ever return to Princeton-Plainsboro, maybe made it impossible for him to ever practice medicine again.

And the promise of a pain-free future isn't going to even _come close _to being able to practice.

* * *

><p>Turns out that when Nalo said "Seattle," she was indulging in some rounding. Thorne worked at a small research hospital in a location that could only roughly be approximated as "Seattle."<p>

"Did you book a motel?" Thorne asks.

"No." Nalo had given his new identity some money, but it wasn't all that much.

"You can stay at my place." Before he could protest, she continues, "I don't live there anymore."

"If you're kicking yourself to the street to give me a place to live, you're a ridiculous bleeding-heart."

She looks at him. "I've been living in my office for the last decade," she says, simply. "I just maintain that apartment so the government doesn't think I'm homeless."

* * *

><p>Thorne pulls up to a cheap-looking group of buildings, hands House a key, and then mumbles something about no groceries and drives off as soon as House gets himself and his stuff out of the car. There's a gate but no guard manning it. Even the few plants look wilted and uncared for, despite the infamous dampness of northwest Washington.<p>

House passes some scantily dressed college students on his way across the "courtyard" of this pathetic apartment complex, lounging around a dried-up pool, and heads into building 3. Thorne's place is at the top, a "penthouse" that's smaller than his previous apartment.

At least there was an elevator.

The key sticks in the lock a bit, and when House pushes the door open, it protests with a loud creak. The apartment really only has four rooms, a bedroom, a tiny bathroom, a kitchen, and an everything-else room. There are a number of boxes strewn around the place, and some furniture – a queen-sized bed, a breakfast table, mismatched chairs, a rather sorry-looking couch, an ancient TV – and everything's covered by a thick layer of dust.

It's pretty obvious that no one had lived here for a while.

House sets down his (new) suitcase and (new) backpack and sinks down into the couch, staring at Thorne's TV. _Now what?_ He picks up the remote and jabs the "on" button several times. Nothing happens, so he chucks the remote across the room. It collides with the breakfast table, the battery compartment popping off and sending corroded batteries flying everywhere.

He doesn't feel like picking them up, so he just sits there in silence until the doorbell rings.

"It's unlocked!"

The man who enters is tall, athletically-built, and is neatly dressed in a suit, complete with briefcase, obviously the type of guy who spends hours of each day trying to look aristocratic and important. At least this guy has a modicum of success, on that front. He introduces himself as Dr. Paul Winfred Richmond, Dean in that brisk, no-nonsense way life gurus always pushed. "Nalo told me who you are."

"Thought I was supposed to be getting a new identity or something." House wishes for some scotch or something like that, to take the edge off. "Looks like that's not happening."

Dr. Richmond laughs. "I've known Nalo for a very long time, Dr. House. I helped her set up her little gig out there." He laughs again. It's not a pleasant sound. "She's a great girl. A bit of a bitch, yeah, but a great girl nevertheless. She's had an eye on you for quite a while, and she's told me what you do. How good you are at what you do."

House doesn't reply. It's a bit disconcerting, actually, to find out that apparently people are watching him, but it's not much of a surprise. He doesn't know much about these people, but he does know that they don't play by the laws.

In their shoes, he'd probably be doing the same, but he definitely doesn't like it happening to him.

"I want to offer you a position here, Dr. House."

Now he really wants that scotch. "I don't have a medical license." He wonders if he's dreaming or hallucinating or something like that, but the lack of Wilson or Cuddy makes him think that it's real.

"Doesn't matter. We can get you one." Richmond inspects his nails, while continuing, "In fact, it's already been done." He reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a leather folder, handing it over to House, who opens it to find a college diploma.

"Charles Walker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology? Don't you think that this is a bit too…high profile?"

"Oh, Charles was real." Richmond smiles and pulls out a photograph. "Or as real as my hackers can make him. And, if necessary, my surgeon."

The photograph is of a young man with eyes that are roughly the same color as House's. It could have been Photoshopped – he couldn't tell – but it certainly looked like a plausible picture of a younger version of himself. _Whoever these people are, they're good, _he thinks. _Scarily good_. They seem to flaunt the laws with a singular lack of concern for the possible consequences, almost as if they believe that they will never be held accountable by a court.

Richmond pulls out a few more papers – a birth certificate, a passport, a driver's license, a social security card, a medical degree from Hopkins. "We've covered all of the traces, everything. A perfect cover. I can give you a new life," he says, "If you're willing to take it."

It's strange, yes, and definitely suspiciously altruistic, but since it works in his favor, he'll accept it. For now, at least.

* * *

><p>They're in the middle of negotiations when Thorne returns with the groceries. She busies herself with making sandwiches while the men talk.<p>

What's his responsibilities? Similar to what he had at PPTH – a single patient at a time, Richmond'll set up a system to refer the difficult-to-diagnose patients straight to him.

Clinic? "We have one, but we'd rather you concentrate on the patients only you can save."

Team? "A resident, two fellows. A post-doc, if you want one." House doesn't.

When does he start? After the surgery. Not before, because Richmond doesn't want people recognizing House and his limp is arguably the most recognizable bit of him.

"I put something in about a torn ACL into your medical records," Thorne says, "so you don't have to be cooped up in here 24/7." It takes House a while before he realizes that she's talking about Charles Walker's medical records. They're his now, though.

Richmond continues, "No one will be looking for you here, anyways. I had Nalo mess with your bank account – it has some withdraws from a bank in the Caribbean, now, so they'll first look for you there. In a couple of days, we're going to get some vandals to go through your old place, grab some your old stuff, if you still want it. We can't let you keep much, though – that'll be too suspicious."

On one hand, he's glad that they're thorough – he doesn't want the police to find him, especially since he knows at least one policeman (Tritter) almost certainly still hates him. On the other, he knows fully well that this new identity means that his old life, the life he's used to, is gone forever, and that hurts. He covers that with snark. "So, how did I get to the Caribbeans? Can't exactly sprout wings and fly, and it's a tad bit to far to swim."

"Got people to fly a small, two-person craft from New Jersey to Miami, and then from Miami to the Caribbeans." Richmond shrugs. "The pilots will deny that you were on them, but that's what they'll be expected to do."

Thorne interrupts to hand out the sandwiches, apologizing for her lack of cooking skills. She doesn't take one for herself – rather, she picks up a giant canister of Lysol wipes and begins wiping down the furniture, and her movements cause her shoulderbones to rise and fall, their outlines appearing and disappearing through the back of her T-shirt.

House raises his eyebrows and glances at her. Thorne's too thin, but not in the anorexic way. There's some muscle tone in her arms, and absolutely no fat whatsoever. Something was off…something was different. "Lawrence-Seip?" he asks.

Richmond sighs. "Yeah. Autoimmune lipoatrophy. Severe, especially for a late-onset. How did you know?"

He mimes the L-shaped scars. "Must be a really bad case, for her to lose the extraocular fat."

"You're the first person to diagnose her correctly on the first try. This is why we're going to hire you. At all costs." Richmond smiles. "You are the best."

"Of course." No false modesty. He doesn't do that.

* * *

><p><em>Too good to be true<em>.

House feels like he's hallucinating, or something like that.

Yesterday, he was a fugitive on the run. Today, he has a new identity, with a new job he'll be able to take in three months. Everything's different, yet the important bits – his job description, for example – are staying eerily the same.

He didn't want to leave Princeton-Plainsboro, his home, but since he couldn't stay there anymore, this is a decent place. The job's better, kind of. More freedom, less clinic. Richmond had basically told him that he'll have free reign, also long as he kept Thorne in the loop because "it's likely that she'll be the one trying to fix up your patients if you mess up. She's the best surgeon I've got." The apartment downright sucks, especially compared to his previous one, but at least there's some hot girls to ogle, downstairs. He's got a new motorcycle – Thorne had handed him the keys to one before she left, muttering something about it being in the handicapped space downstairs. And speaking about Thorne – she's rapidly becoming a credit card with his name on it.

There's no Cuddy, but he's through with her.

Wilson's not here, either, but he's got another source of free lunch now, with the bonus of not having the mother-hen nagging.

Life's good. Life should be good. Or better, at least. Or…who's he trying to convince, anyways? Himself?

Thorne left him a six-pack of beer. He already knows it's not going to be enough. There should be a liquor store, somewhere. It's a college town. There has to be one.

* * *

><p>"Lisa..."<p>

He's grabbing a girl's brunette curls, staring into her slate-gray eyes and intensely trying to convince himself that she's Lisa Cuddy and not Krystal, the call girl. It helps that Krystal has similar eyes and similar hair, and a well-proportioned figure with plenty up-top to play with. She knows now to react to that name, to uphold the illusion herself.

Then again, he's paying her.

She runs her hands down his sides – that tease – stopping her right hand at his hip and sliding her left inwards to just graze the inside of his thigh with her fingernails. He drags her face down to his for a kiss – he's paying extra for this "privilege" – and closes his eyes and thinks of Cuddy.

When it's over, he sinks back onto the bed, a bed that feels more and more like it's his own, while she collects the check and lets herself out, locking the door shut behind her. There's some vodka on the ground to his left. Next to it, there's a fresh bottle of Vicodin, prescribed by Mary Jillian Hawthrone.

The script was filled four days ago. Of the sixty pills he got, there's only two left.

* * *

><p>He's at a bar. He doesn't know how he managed to get there. At least the alcohol's numbing the pain from his leg. He shifts a bit on the barstool and the world tilts and whirls around him.<p>

The bartender takes his keys from him, makes a phone call, and the next thing he knows Thorne's here, still dressed in her scrubs.

She pays, grabs his motorcycle keys, and drags him to her car, somehow supporting his six-foot frame. She's cool and businesslike, the way she always is. With a small grunt, she dumps him into the passenger seat and starts the car.

House expects a lecture, but it never comes.

He feels cold fingers on his wrist – Thorne's feeling his pulse. "120 and weak. Not good." He should be worried, but he's too drunk for that. She reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the Vicodin. "Only five left? I _just _wrote you a script three days ago," Thorne mutters as she replaces the pills. "Surprised you're not dead yet."

To be honest, he's surprised too.

There's a red light. It's just a stoplight, he thinks, but the red light catches Thorne's bony features in an especially creepy way. He knows that she's not an evil woman, but _that's due to chance alone._ His instinct would be screaming at him, but it's currently muffled by a tad bit too much alcohol and Vicodin.

And then the light turns green and the moment passes, and she's just Thorne-the-workaholic-surgeon again.

They pull up in front of that apartment complex. She drags him back to the apartment and then dumps him onto the bed, on his side with a wastebasket near his head. He feels a small prick in the crook of his elbow, and then the cold fingers at his wrist again. The entire bed tilted, slightly, carrying his feet upwards and his head downwards, and then Thorne roughly drags his arms and legs, probably into the safety position. And then the front door opens and slams shut.

The next morning, he wakes up with a massive headache. There's an ibuprofen and some water next to the bed. He takes a Vicodin with the water.

It's not as effective as it usually is.

Thorne must have given him an opioid blocker, or something.

* * *

><p>"<em>Stay out of the public eye as much as possible while you still need that crutch<em>," _Richmond had said. "Don't worry about money or anything. We'll take care of that. If you need anything, call Thorne." _

At House's request, Thorne had brought him a Nintendo-DS, a Gameboy, a GameCube, a flat-screen TV, and a couple of other toys as well. It's boring, staying at home all the time, subsiding off of sandwiches and canned spaghetti, and even all the games, 300 + channels, and pay-per-view couldn't keep him occupied.

He's spent some time trying to learn more about his soon-to-be employer and colleagues, and unsurprisingly there's not much information. Richmond's resume is online, but there's nothing interesting in it, and he finds Thorne's publication record, but it's rather sparse. Half the shit she does is funded illegally, he knows, of course she wouldn't be publishing that.

A search for PPTH isn't all that interesting, either.

He knows that Chase has taken a leave of absence and Foreman's the new head of Diagnostics. Taub quit, in late July, to restart his own practice, and Foreman hired a replacement, some Dr. Park who isn't all that interesting to join Thirteen.

Several times, he almost searches for Wilson or Cuddy, but he always stops himself before he does. He's better off not knowing. He also doesn't Google his own name – there won't be anything new, there. People hate him. They've always have.

He doesn't think to google "Charles Walker." Not that it would have mattered if he had – it's a common name.

House lives for the times when the phone rings. Thorne calls, a couple of times a day, with consults. He's pretty sure that they're pity consults, since she never calls twice to ask about the same patient:

"Fever. Joint pain. Vomiting."

"Check for a rash."

"Okay."

And then, a few hours later:

"You're right, she had a rash. Chicken pox triggered rheumatoid arthritis. There's another patient, though, and his kidneys are kind of failing. I'm looking through the database" – and by "the database" she means the sizable collection nearly-expired cloned organs she always has on hand – "for a match, but I dunno if I can find one. Oh, his serum calcium is through the roof."

"It's his parathyroid, idiot."

"Thanks, Walker," she replies (she never calls him "House"), hanging up on him before he could reply in turn. He replaces the phone in its cradle with a sigh, knowing that she's probably making up these cases on the fly. They're not that good. She's a surgeon. Diagnostics is not what she does.

It does, however, get rid of the ennui, for a while, at least.

The Vicodin helps too.

* * *

><p>The day of the surgery dawns cloudy and rainy, just like every other day had dawned. Thorne drives him to hospital.<p>

"I can't continue to prescribe you Vicodin after this, you know," she says as she drives. "I'm not willing to risk losing my license over this."

He wants to point out that she's obviously been over-prescribing for him, for the last three months, and she didn't seem to care about it then. But Wilson she is not and he really doesn't care that much about her livelihood. "Couldn't Nalo just get you a new one?" he asks, flippantly.

Thorne shrugs. "Yeah, she could, but in the big scheme of things, I'm just a small fry, so she's just as likely to hang me out to dry. Especially if it was a drug-dealing-related charge – I wouldn't be able to brush that off as a complication or anything. Even if she didn't just let them toss me into jail, I'd have to get a complete new identity, at the very least, and I rather like the one I have now." She shrugged again. "Doesn't matter. I know people. If you still want the Vicodin, you'll have to get it from them instead. Don't worry. They're good. They've never been caught."

She pulls into a parking space at the hospital, one that's hidden in the back, and takes him through an insane maze of repair tunnels before finally taking him to the OR. His thigh is aching, now, the way it always does, even through the Vicodin, but worse now, due to the walking. He can't bring himself to request a wheelchair, though.

Thorne hands him a hospital gown and leaves to scrub in. He changes in the bathroom, apprehension building in his heart. House knows that Thorne's a competent surgeon – he doesn't doubt her skills. But still, it's a bit nerve-wracking to be finally losing the thing that he's hated more than anything else, these last ten years. The thing that had come to define him, and his life, the thing that caused his downward spiral into addiction and psychosis, made him the miserable bastard he was, caused him to push nearly – no, not nearly. The qualifier isn't needed. He's pushed everyone away.

He'll be glad to say goodbye to the pain, he tries to convince himself. It's going to happen, anyways, no matter what he wants.

For a moment, he foolishly hopes that the surgery will reverse everything, bring Cuddy back into his arms, make Wilson his friend again, make himself less of a misanthrope. But then that moment passes, and he knows that it's not going to happen. As far as Wilson and Cuddy know, he fled to the Caribbeans after nearly running Wilson over and driving his car into Cuddy's house. If they every see him again, they'll want him dragged in front of a court and sent to jail. And jail's no place for a cripple.

There's no going back. There's no going home.

A nurse and an anesthesiologist come in, armed with the tools of their trade. "Are you ready?" the nurse asks.

He nods. Not really, but he's as ready as he'll ever be.

"Count backwards from ten…"

He doesn't even get to six before he's out.

* * *

><p>When he wakes up, he's out of pain entirely. House tries to sit up, but a harried nurse quickly pushes him down again. "Don't sit up," she orders, while running off to attend to the next patient.<p>

"Why not?" he asks no one, but a look to the left answers his question. On the nightstand, there's a sickly-looking liver on a dissection tray, a scalpel stuck in it. He doesn't have to ask. He knows it's his.

Thorne had cloned him a new liver as well. _That bitch_, he thinks, while smiling. There's a streak in her that would make her a slightly-less-than-crappy diagnostician, if she ever wanted to switch fields.

He looks at the liver again and doesn't like what he sees. It's a tad green and a tad splotchy, instead of the rich red-brown a healthy liver looked like. Intellectually, he knows that he'd been trashing it for the last decade. It's still something different to see the damage, however. He reaches a hand up and grabs the scalpel. It refuses to move.

Oh. Cirrhosis.

That's not good.

At least he has a new one, though.

He looks for the morphine stand, and then curses. There isn't one. Thorne had evidently given him an intrathecal pump as well.

_God damn fucking Prialt_, he thinks. The non-narcotic painkiller's powerful, sure, but it's definitely not what he wants.

* * *

><p>Thorne only visits once when he's in the ICU. "Surgery went well. Surprisingly few complications, really." She sits down on the only chair in the room. "I took the liberty of detoxing you while you were still under and replacing your liver while I was at it, so that took longer than expected, and you've been out for about three days. Don't worry – we've been using e-stim to prevent your muscles from atrophying too much. How are you feeling?"<p>

"Like someone rigged me up with a medication I didn't want," House snipes. "I said I didn't want a intrathecal pump."

Thorne waves her hand dismissively. "I gave you a miRNA-gene mounted on a plasmid to block your Substance P production for a while. It should silence itself and stop working soon. You're welcome."

House does a double-take. "Looks like you found the right hospital, then, if you're going to be treating patients with crackpot theories. That's barely past being a hypothesis." He knows that microRNAs (miRNAs) are small segments of RNAs that helped regulate the process of creating new proteins like the neurotransmitter Substance P. A certain miRNA could completely block a certain protein from being created, a fact regularly exploited in research but not yet applied to medicine.

"It's not just a theory." Thorne signs, shaking her head slightly. "You can thank every tweaker from here to New York, for that particular bit of research." A sarcastic smile. "It's their hard-earned cash that paid for it."

"Well, thanks, that certainly increases my trust in your experimental medicine," he replies. "Guess I shouldn't have expected more from a bunch of drug-dealing hicks with fake medical licenses."

She ignores the barb – she's good at that – and hands him a resume. "I know you're going to be looking for hirelings soon," she says. "Can you at least look at this one?"

Glaring at her, House takes the resume. Thorne's deflecting, he knows. He'll get to the bottom of that latter. The resume's more interesting for now. "Boy-toy?" he asks, flipping through it. It's not bad. Wouldn't have caught his eye in a pile, though.

"No. My husband," Thorne replies.

"You're married?" House raises an eyebrow.

"Yeah, yeah, a workaholic idiot who sleeps on the couch in her office every night is married, and so was Britney Spears for like forty-eight hours or something. It's not that difficult." She shrugs, throwing her hands up. "Look, we got married a fucking long time ago, and the only reason we're not divorced right now is because we get tax breaks for stuff like that. But since he's married to me, everybody thinks that the hospital only hired him because _I _insisted on it, and thus no one's willing to give him a fair chance. That's all I want. For you to give him a fair chance."

She pauses in her diatribe, apologizes, and in less than a second, the cool, business-like façade's back on her face, and then she's said her goodbyes and she's out the door, letting it close quietly behind her, and only then does he register that she's left.

He decides to hire Thorne's husband, not because of his resume or anything, but because House's intrigued by this man who would sacrifice his career to remain married to a woman who clearly did not love him.

They move him from the ICU two days later.

* * *

><p>The next Monday also dawns cloudy.<p>

House wakes up without pain, and he automatically reaches over for the Vicodin that no longer exists. _Damn_, he thinks. _Fucking miRNA_. _You're a fucking bitch, Thorne. Fucking bitch._

He really should yell at her or something.

Carefully, he stands up, waiting for the twinges to come from his thigh, but they don't come. He knows he has to take stuff easy for a while, especially since he's just had two major operations done concurrently and also because the miRNA will block all pain, so he won't be able to tell if he's accidentally injured himself by stressing his leg or his torso until the damage's major enough to be seen through his skin.

His legs buckle a bit, but with the support of the IV pole he makes it to the bathroom to pee. He still has to favor his right leg (his nervous system needs time to fully map out the new muscle), but for once, it didn't hurt.

Then again, without Substance P, the neurotransmitter of pain, nothing hurts.

He returns to the bed and lays down again. There's a GameBoy on the nightstand. It has a few games on it, but none of them are of interest. He should get Thorne to buy him more.

There's no Vicodin. The only ethyl alcohol around is in the hand sanitizer, and that's laced with methanol, so he can't drink that. (Plus, it would be _such _an addict thing to do.)

_You fucking bitch._

* * *

><p>On Tuesday, Richmond comes by to check up on him. "Heard you threw a dumbbell at the PT."<p>

"They're all sadists." The miRNA thing must be wearing off now, or self-silencing, or something, because House's muscles are beginning to ache. Not much yet, but it's enough to remind him of the humiliation he endured earlier.

"Well, that's kind of what they're hired for." Richmond shrugs.

"To bring agony, pain, and suffering to the hospital? I thought we were supposed to heal people and make them happy. Although, I suppose, if you really want to balance your karma, it's something you could do. Minimal harm to yourself and all that." He shrugs. "Hey, you know what, you could hire a bunch of dominatrices, and save a bunch of money. And increase patient happiness."

Richmond ignores the barbs. "They're supposed to push you beyond your limits," he says, simply. "It's the only way you'll get stronger. But, anyways, that's not why I'm here." He pulls out an employee card and places it on the table next to House. "You start Monday after next. You have until next Friday to find yourself a team."

* * *

><p>House's discharged early Wednesday morning, and Thorne drives him back to his apartment. It's technically hers still, since she's the one paying the rent, but he thinks of it as his. He lives there, now, and it's his DVDs and his bourbon on the coffee table, his peanut butter in the kitchen, his Vicodin sitting on the nightstand.<p>

His Vicodin.

She leaves him at the gates to the complex and he makes his way up, via elevator, with a stack of resumes in his backpack to look over before Monday.

His Vicodin. Sitting on the nightstand.

He unlocks the door, and he can picture the little orange vial with the white label and the white cap, six pills inside. Six little white pills, each with 325 mg of acetaminophen and 10 mg of hydrocodone bitartrate. Less acetaminophen than his previous Vicodins. Those had contained 600 mg of acetaminophen. Same amount of hydrocodone.

A stack of resumes in his backpack. Focus on that instead. He needs to set up interviews and track down references and a lot of other stuff reasonably soon.

With a deep breath, he opens the door and walks inside, proceeding to nearly trip over a pair of Nikes. They're dark gray and red, and he recognizes them as running shoes. And not cheap ones.

Smiling, he laces them on, remembering what it's like to feel the wind rushing through his hair.

When he returns, he marches straight to the Vicodin, and flushes them down the toilet. He then pours himself a nice glass of bourbon.

* * *

><p>On Friday, he's gone stir-crazy enough to set up interviews for Monday.<p>

It's something he regrets Sunday night, when he's sitting on the couch and he realizes he has to be at work in six hours and he'll have quite the nice hangover by then. But he conducts the interviews anyways, with pithy-but-grating statements.

Thorne's husband, Michaels, turns out to be a fairly decent neurologist. Despite his small stature and the fact that he's bedecked with nerdy glasses, Michaels nevertheless manages to stand up to House's grilling and expertly deflects any inquiries towards his marriage. Definitely hired.

House goes through nearly all of the interviews before he finds another potential underling – a single father by the name of Dr. Young who specialized in oncology. He's older than the typical fellow, probably because he had to take time off in order to take care of his child. He's hired, and House leaves the residents to Tuesday.

The next day, he hires the third interviewee on the spot.


	2. Ch1: The Future, Soon

**Disclaimer**: Don't own, don't profit.

**AN: **Just to clarify: I make no promises that House and Cuddy will end up together. I'm too tired to go into a long screed about why I think relationship tags are useless and obnoxious, and meh I have a pset due and I've completely failed to do laundry this week so yay for midnight clothes-washing!

I've gotten a review that I don't quite understand. Now, normally I wouldn't include stuff about reviews in ANs, but this one is from an anonymous reviewer, so I'm kind of hoping said reviewer will come across this:

Thanks for the concrit! One thing – I'm not quite sure what you're referring to – could you be a bit more specific? I'm not quite sure what you mean by "lacking in passion". Could you please explain that a bit?

**Music**: Eh, I've been listening to Car Talk lately. Blame my class selection for introducing me to yet another time-consumer. But "The Future Soon" by Jonathan Coulton is the inspiration of this chapter title. Great song.

Additionally – Sixx:AM, "Accidents Will Happen"? This song. Exactly this song.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1: The Future, Soon<strong>

* * *

><p>There's a hole in her home, and a hole in her House.<p>

Lisa Cuddy stands in the middle of a sea of debris and shattered glass, holding her hairbrush and desperately thankful that Rachel was at her mother's. The room's lit by the blue-and-red lights of the police cars. The light comes through the hole in the wall of her home.

A hole caused by House's car.

She tries not to cry. Not now, not in front of the police and the world, not now when she doesn't have her home to shield her anymore. She feels raw, open, as if everyone can see into her soul through that damned hole in her house. There's fragments of chairs and table everywhere but half of the chairs have survived. Her precious china cabinet, thankfully, was against the opposite wall.

Wilson's talking to the police. Cuddy knows she should do that too, but right now she can't find the energy within herself to move. In her head, she's replaying that scene, over and over again, the sudden screeches and crashes from the impact, herself running shoeless into a sea of broken glass, adrenaline and shock keeping her from realizing the pain.

And then House hands her the damned hairbrush. She's still holding that.

A pair of police approach her slowly, cautiously, as if she's some sort of glass sculpture that'll shatter if they're not careful enough, and Wilson's behind them, trying to be reassuring but she really doesn't want to talk to him right now (he's House's friend first).

"Ms. Cuddy," one of the policemen begins. Wrong title, but she doesn't correct him.

She gives them her statement as calmly as she can, and then she sits down in one of her remaining dining room chairs, holding onto that blasted hairbrush.

By dawn, she's managed to appear okay.

* * *

><p>The next day, Cuddy dresses herself absentmindedly – low-cut blouse, slate-gray skirt, matching blazer, matching pumps – and goes to work, not caring that it was Saturday. She tries to lose herself in a haze of memos and other administrative duties, the work needed to keep PPTH, her baby, running smoothly.<p>

All day, she expects him to drop by, but he doesn't. _It's a Saturday, and he's without a case_, she thinks. She looks through case files that she'd planned to give him. She reapplies her god-damned lipstick, once, twice, three times, almost expecting it to turn into a bottle of Vicodin. Like it would. Like the universe was prone to having fits of irony.

Cuddy remembers House – the angry, hurt man in a hospital bed who's trying to accept the fact that he'll never run again, never be pain-free again; the lost, clueless, almost child-like way he was when he realized that he'd been hallucinating and what he thought was proof that she'd had sex with him – her lipstick – was actually his Vicodin and reality betrayed him; the well-veiled panic he had when he approached her for morphine when the ketamine treatment began wearing off; the stoned, not there look he had when they were both convinced that she was going to die; the angry, determined look he had when he drove his car into her home.

She doesn't want to think of that, but it's part of her reality. She loved him. He loved her, yes, but not enough to give up the drugs for her.

As if she's on autopilot, she continues shifting papers and signing reports and writing memos as if nothing had happened. And in her way, she mourns the man who crashed his car into her house.

* * *

><p>Five o'clock on the dot she leaves the hospital. Julia has Rachel for now. When she pulls up in her driveway, Cuddy realizes that she hasn't exactly made any plans to fix her house or even find alternative housing for the time it'd take to fix the house.<p>

She turns around. She can live with Julia for now.

Sunday dawns, and Cuddy's up, bright and early, with a freshly made-up face and a cup of coffee to hide behind. Wilson calls to tell her that House has fled somewhere. The police think he's in the Caribbeans.

She doesn't let herself break down and cry. She has to be strong, for Rachel, for PPTH. She goes for a jog, she spends some time in Princeton's libraries (and tries not to remember another college library with a certain blue-eyed medical student, so long ago), she plays with Rachel, she finds a contractor to repair her house and a realtor to sell it.

Monday comes, too soon, and she finds Foreman and gives him a case. "You're head of Diagnostics, now."

* * *

><p>"<em>That's how we'll know<br>__This is not a test, oh no  
><em>_This is cardiac arrest  
><em>_Of a world too proud to admit our mistakes  
><em>_We're crashing into the ground as all fall from grace"_

~ Rise Against, "Collapse" ~

* * *

><p>As the days pass, House slowly conforms to his new schedule.<p>

Mondays always dawn too bright and too early for his hangover, and he curses as he manages to drag his sorry carcass to work, where's he's usually either greeted by a stack of blue folders on his desk or news that his current patient has taken a turn towards the worse "and where were you, Walker? You weren't answering your phone" from Ashley, his gray-eyed, brunette resident. She's quite pushy, especially considering her position at the bottom of the totem pole.

House ignores her and heads straight to his desk. Out of the corner of his eye, he can usually see Michaels texting Thorne, but he ignores that and boots up his computer (which is the only Mac around. Richmond's cheap.)

Five minutes later, a large mug of deliciously-sweet coffee lands on his desk and Ashley reminds him that he's supposed to be figuring out why Ms. Vomiting Blood's creatine levels were up and oh-by-the-way-she-coded-last-night. He ignores her again in favor of a game of PacMan as she mutters under her breath and Dr. Young tries to catch a nap on the conference room table.

By the time House looks up from his game, Dr. Young has given up on his nap and is now reading a medical journal, Michaels's on his computer, and Ashley's nowhere to be found. He orders some tests and then leaves to find Thorne.

Thorne's usually in one of three places – asleep on her couch, in an OR, or in her lab. If the first, he doesn't bother trying to wake her, as Thorne only sleeps when she's incredibly tired and nothing short of a klaxon can rouse her. If the second, he spends some time critiquing her style or making sarcastic comments from the observation box. Something like "you're holding the damn scalpel wrong" that she just ignores.

Ashley's usually in the lab even when Thorne's not, pipetting things around and whatnot. Thorne's sometimes at the computer and sometimes at the whiteboard, and rarely she'll be pipetting too with the frenzied, almost crazed motions of a scientist on the verge of discovery. But today's she's not around and House spends some quality time hazing Ashley instead. She's the only one who responds to that, but eventually she just throws her hands up and ignores him too.

And then House usually retreats to his laptop again to wait out his hangover. His pager usually goes off right before lunch (damn patients, they never code at helpful times), forcing House to abandon the Chinese food he bought with Thorne's credit card in favor of an emergency ddx. (There's no point to stealing anyone's food, as only Dr. Young eats anything worth eating – falafel is not food – and even then only rarely. Stupid low-sodium fad, making it difficult to steal anyone's lunch. Blergh.)

When he returns to the Chinese food later, it's cold but he's usually hungry enough that he'll eat it anyways.

Near 2pm, Ms. Vomiting Blood's kidneys fail and House sets off searching for Thorne again, finally cornering her on the treadmill in the basement of the hospital. With a sigh, she agrees to look for a transplant and continues her workout.

House returns to his office to look at the latest test results. There's quite a few that he didn't order – Michaels is as passive-aggressive as his wife – but sometimes those came in handy. Today, they aren't; they're disproving his gut instinct again. With a sigh, he pulls out her folder (from under his laptop) and scans it again. Broken arm in second grade, mother died of cancer, bloody hell none of this is useful. He wants another history but his patient isn't awake.

He orders a dangerous test instead, knowing that Michaels will text Thorne about it and she'll turn up, hovering near the doorway with gloves on and a handful of syringes handy until she's sure that the test won't harm the patient permanently.

Ms. Vomiting Blood receives a new kidney at 3pm, and House conducts a ddx in the observation room. He manages to find another handful of diagnoses to test, but he's pretty sure that none of them are right and that he's missing some important clue or symptom or something and while his fellows are off testing these diagnoses, he drags Thorne out to search the patient's home. She can pick locks.

The first time he dragged her out to search a patient's home, he finally realizes just how much of a criminal Thorne could have been. Not just the lockpicking – any bored person could master lockpicking – but the simple fact that she always seems to head for the best hiding places, unearthing drugs or diaries or whatever, and the fact that she's so much better than he is at covering her traces. It reminds him that he knows so little about his new employer and colleagues.

He admits that he's entertained the idea of hiring a PI except he knows that there's probably no PI he can hire within a hundred miles who's willing to cross Thorne.

And sure enough, it's Thorne who finds the diary, Thorne who carefully holds onto the hair that was draped across it, and Thorne who carefully replaces that hair when House's done skimming that diary. It's not all that interesting, but it could be useful.

He drives on the way back to the hospital, and Thorne sleeps restlessly. House talks to her as if she's awake.

"Kidneys and heart."

No reply.

"Just spent a week in South America, but IgG levels normal, and she doesn't have a fever." That doesn't actually matter, since IgG levels wouldn't rise if her immune system didn't recognize the virus, but it still didn't seem right.

Thorne wakes up just as they pull into the parking lot of the hospital. It's getting late, and Ms. Vomiting Blood is stable, so House just drops Thorne off and heads home, not really looking forward to an unsatisfying dinner of canned soup and sex with a hooker.

But Krystal's waiting for him when he returns home, gray eyes carefully rimmed with dark eyeliner and brunette curls artfully arranged, wearing nothing but a frilly apron and holding a plate of spaghetti. "_Hello_, House," she purrs.

He ignores her, pushes past her and reaches into the fridge for a beer, ignoring the fact that she's trying to hide her disapproving glare. "I better not be charged for this. I didn't ask for it." He's an adult. He can drink on a work night if he wants to.

Her face softens. "You've been working Thorne too hard lately, so I thought I'd sidetrack you for a while," she says, with a smile, and House realizes that she's here not because she's Krystal the call girl pretending to be Lisa Cuddy, but because she's Ashley and she's still capable of caring for other people.

They have an interesting relationship, certainly. She's his resident by day, his hooker by night, and they usually keep her personas as separate as possible. Krystal is Ashley, yes, but usually they both refuse to acknowledge that. The fact that she's the one breaking that wall tonight should be significant, but he's too fixated on his current patient to care.

He does enjoy the spaghetti, though, and the sex they have afterwards, and then he pays her for the sex but not the food or the girlfriend experience since he didn't ask for either of those, and then she leaves. He knows that she's heading back to the hospital, though, probably in a misguided attempt to save Thorne from herself.

Sometimes, when things are doing okayish and she isn't that busy she'll agree to stay for an hour or so after the sex, cuddled up next to him with her curly brunette hair and Lisa's eyes, and he can pretend. Which he does, sometimes, and sometimes not. She's never vulnerable or open – she's a professional – but still it's the best time to ask her questions.

He remembers asking her why she became a hooker. Her response: A light shrug, an offhand comment, "I have loans from medical school."

"Thorne would be more than willing to pay those for you."

Another shrug. "I already owe her enough." Said icily.

He backed off. "But why prostitution?"

"Fast money, and it's a victim-less crime," she said, throwing off the covers and picking up the envelope of money he left out for her. It was clear that she no longer wanted to talk.

But the next time, the next time he called her over and while he's in the middle of kissing her with his eyes closed, she breaks the kiss to admit, "It's because the money means that it won't be for forever." She leans back down to silence him with her tongue, and he never got a chance to ask another question.

It's a pity that he likes it when she stays until he falls asleep, letting him run his fingers through her curls and call her Lisa Cuddy, so he doesn't push the issue, resolves to call her Lisa whenever she decided to stay from then on, and wishes he could figure out Ashley and Thorne.

He knows next to nothing about Ashley, and even less about the surgeon, and no amount of searching could bring him anything. It's as if they've suddenly appeared here, fully trained, just like how Nalo had made Walker appear from nowhere.

But tonight he's tired, and that one beer is buzzing in his veins, and Ms. Vomiting Blood still doesn't have a diagnoses, so he cracks open a journal instead.

By Tuesday morning, he has new ideas, and he's pretty certain at least one of them is right. He enjoys the big reveal and then goes to occupy himself with his Gameboy, knowing that Richmond won't have another case for him for at least a couple of hours.

* * *

><p><em>On and on, all that I've been sayin' is<br>__Go. Go and live your life,  
><em>_'Cause I can't save it  
><em>_No matter how I try.  
><em>_You know I gave you everything against advice.  
><em>_Lost myself now I can't end this co-dependant life._

~ Sixx:AM, "Codependence" ~

* * *

><p>It get easier. It really does.<p>

A month ago, House drove his car into her home.

Two weeks ago, the police had called her only to tell her that the trail has gone cold. She remembers panicking into the phone, babbling and yelling and being glad later, that she had been alone. The police officer was sympathetic. "Dr. Cuddy, I'm sorry to bother you, but do you know if Dr. House ever had any connection to Arianne Credin?"

"No." Surprisingly, she felt no jealousy. "As far as I know, he was faithful to me." Perhaps he's betrayed her too much, perhaps it's that she's already gotten over him.

"Faithful?" The officer sounded confused. "Arianne Credin, the Ponzi scam queen? Oh, that's not what I meant, Dr. Cuddy. Dr. House's disappearance seems to be the work of either Ms. Credin or someone associated with her. It has her M.O. all over it."

"So why can't you find him?" she asked, although she already knew the answer. Now she remembered, of course, the infamous arrest and escape of the former Wall Street executive. Five years now, and still no branch of law enforcement had managed to find her.

The police officer hesitated, and then failed to answer her question. "If he's in Credin's clutches, then he's either more dangerous than we thought, or in a great amount of danger himself." A pause. "Credin has been implicated in money laundering as well, and she has connections to quiet a few drug dealers in your area."

"Thank you," she replied, cool and collected.

For Rachel's sake, she spends some time wondering why she let House into her life, and she also wonders why she's never wondered how House got his Vicodin before.

But Monday shows up normally, and Tuesday did too, and she files Credin somewhere into her mental database alongside House and checks up on the progress her house is making and goes to Julia's house which feels more and more like her home because Rachel's there. On Wednesday Cuddy remembered that she probably should keep Wilson in the loop as well, and she's not surprised when he admits that he's been writing House scripts. Actually, it makes her feel better. House might be in the hands of one of the most dangerous criminals of the 21st century, or maybe it's all coincidence and he's enjoying himself on a beach in the tropics, but at least she didn't let someone really dangerous into Rachel's life.

And then a week's passed since the police called her and nothing had burned down and the police still didn't know where House was and somehow Cuddy felt that she was moving on.

And today she has a date. Later this week she'll meet with her realtor – there's a nice loft, pretty close to the hospital, that's coming up cheap and she really can't live in her ancestral home anymore. And maybe sometime in the future she'll be okay again.

* * *

><p>Brad's...nice. And stable. He's a lawyer – patent law – and Rachel likes him. He's young, slightly younger than she is and although he doesn't have kids himself, he's great with his nieces and nephews. She doesn't have to monitor his sleep schedule, doesn't have to pick him up from bars in the middle of the night, doesn't have to mother him the way she had to mother House. Brad doesn't complain about her cooking or her salads, doesn't mind the fact that she gets up at 5 AM, doesn't barge into her office in the middle of the day when she's trying to sweet-talk a donor. And in return she doesn't complain when he misses a lunch date due to a case that just went way too long or spends evening after evening with one eye on Rachel and another on a stack of papers.<p>

They're good for each other, she thinks. They're two professionals doing their best to romance each other between their hectic careers and raising Rachel and he's nice and stable and so what he doesn't kiss her the way House did? That doesn't matter – House is no longer in her life. Brad is, sleeping in her bed when she wakes up in the morning, juggling coffee and Rachel as she does yoga, waiting for her to return home to her new loft – their new loft – with a stack of case files and a glass of wine and promises of fun times later in the curve of his lips. Yes. Later. After Rachel's asleep, of course.

* * *

><p>And before Lisa realizes it, three months have passed, and then four, five, six, and she's no longer thinking of House at all. Brad's completely moved in with her. Rachel's completely forgotten about House. Diagnostics is still thriving, even without House, and for the first time it stays within its budget and she doesn't need to get the MRI fixed every other month.<p>

Brad spends weeks hinting about weddings and marriages and families and their future before finally giving up and outright asking Cuddy. She considers it, tells him that it's just too soon, but right now, she likes him and Rachel likes him and please don't get this wrong, but not right now, ask again in a year or so?

She relaxes when he laughs and admits that he hasn't even bought a ring yet, and yeah, they've only known each other for five months or so, so it is a bit early, "but I do love you, Lisa, and I want us – you, me, and Rachel – to become a family. Someday."

With a grin, she agrees, someday.

And then Rachel got sick.

* * *

><p>They tell her she's imagining it. That's it's just her maternal instinct going haywire, that's she's overreacting. That Rachel was preemie and born in an undesirable location and underfed and undernourished for her first few weeks and her immune system can't be the best, that young children just have colds, but she thinks that they're wrong. She drags Rachel to doctor after doctor, and people start wondering if she's crazy. Wilson and Brad stick to her side, though; Wilson defends her at work, Brad supports her at home.<p>

It's Thirteen, however, who gives her the key to the dragon's maw.

They've never actually talked much, before, actually, and she's kind of surprised how cool Thirteen's gaze is.

"How sure are you?"

Cuddy replies, "I'm absolutely sure."

A pause. "Sure enough to let House look at her case?"

"You know where he is?" Cuddy doesn't let herself stop and feel and analyze and everything. Just stay in this minute, stay in now.

"Seattle's been wanting him for years. Here." Thirteen hands her a small slip of paper with an URL written on it.

Cuddy looks at the paper. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"Wouldn't have accomplished anything." Another easy shrug.

"Then why are you telling me now?"

Green eyes flashed. "Because I believe that you're not crazy."

* * *

><p>In her office, she starts typing the URL into the browser and stops. Cuddy doesn't know what she wants to do, doesn't know if she wants to know or not. <em>Seattle's been wanting him for years<em>. What the hell did that even mean?

_Dr. House's disappearance seems to be the work of either Ms. Credin or someone associated with her. It has her M.O. all over it._

_Why didn't you tell me earlier? Wouldn't have accomplished anything._

The police officer had seemed unwilling to mess with Credin. If they were to get their hands on this URL, would they simply do nothing? Maybe, perhaps, and Cuddy really wants Brad to be here right now. She types the URL in and holds her breath as she presses enter.

The page loads too quickly, and she's suddenly facing a picture of Gregory House. It's labeled Charles Walker, but she knows it's him. She expects her breath to catch or something, but strangely enough she feels rather empty, rather neutral.

Once, she had loved him. Once, she had hated him. Now, it's neither. It's nothing.

* * *

><p>At first, she only booked tickets for herself and her daughter, but Brad insists on coming along as well, and so does Wilson, and she's glad for that. She doesn't call House first, doesn't give him any indication that she's coming, actually, since he'd probably flee if he had forewarning.<p>

On the plane, she holds onto Rachel with one hand and Brad with the other, wishing she had accepted Brad as her finance when he asked.

* * *

><p><em>My sun may never rise the way it did with you,<br>__And he may never kiss me the way that you'd do  
><em>_But at least he makes me feel like a part of his life  
><em>_At least he doesn't make me cry  
><em>_I know I can call him mine_

~ Tata Young, "Call Him Mine" ~

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> I seem to have found myself a tumblr. nightshadequeen dot tumblr dot com :P

Also – I take goddamned pride in my medical knowledge, and I didn't exactly have time to put together a real case, which is why I glossed over Ms. Vomiting Blood's case details. I did prep a couple of cases for this fic, though, so it'll be more medicine-intensive in future chapters.


	3. Ch2: Eye of the Storm

**Disclaimer**: Don't own, don't profit.

**AN**: So, re-cap from last chapter:

Rachel may or may not be sick, but Cuddy's worried.

Cuddy's managed to get House's location from Thirteen. Exactly how Thirteen knows where House is is unknown.

The police have good reason to believe Arianne Credin is responsible for House's disappearance. We know that Nalo's the one who helped House disappear. Nalo's connection to Credin is unknown.

Cuddy is currently dating Brad, a lawyer and a pretty nice guy.

Thorne may have a criminal background.

Ashley is Krystal, who looks to some degree similar to Lisa Cuddy.

Oh, and if you're not an Linux or a Mac, don't worry about what a workspace is. Windows doesn't do them well.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2: Eye of the Storm<strong>

* * *

><p>On a Thursday about six months after <em>the incident<em>, House catches Thorne walking into the hospital at roughly eight fifteen in the morning. It's not a normal thing – House's usually still asleep at this time, and Thorne doesn't usually come back from running for at least another hour. But last night some damned punk hadn't quit with the obnoxious dub-step until six in the morning and the couch in his office is quite nice and the patient _du jour_ apparently has multi-organ-system problems the way they all do.

So he's there early and so is she so House definitely can't pass up the chance to snark at her. For starters, she has the most ridiculously oversized pair of sunglasses plastered across her face. "Looks like Ms. Goody-Two-Shoes finally took a walk to the dark side." He gestures towards Thorne's sunglasses. "Fun night?" He remembers times ago when he'd be the type to stay up until dawn partying, but sadly employment and a fifty-year-old body disagree with such things nowadays. "You should have called me, I'd show you what a real good time is."

"Fuck off," Thorne mutters harshly, accompanying her words with a finger, and House is immediately suspicious. Thorne's not usually prone to profanity or displays of...well, any emotion. He watches as she collects a stack of pink slips from the receptionist and heads toward the elevators, analyzing her gait for any changes, her features for any symptoms.

"And no, it wasn't a fun night," Thorne continues as she presses the buttons for third floor and close. "Couldn't get D16 to cross the blood-brain barrier, and then, well..." She makes a dismissive move with her hand. "Shit happens."

House stops the door from closing and follows her in. "Oh...drinking alone at home? Doesn't seem like something you'd do, Missy." For the lack of a cane to play with, he tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Guess you can stop with your lectures now."

She sighs, and he knows that she's rolling her eyes from behind those dark glasses. "One: I don't lecture you – Ashley does. Two: You know for fucks sake that I don't drink. LS, remember? Alcohol, Tylenol, adrafinil all _not a good idea_."

He tilts his head, studying her. In the last five minutes, he's gotten more expressions out of her than he's ever seen in the months that he's known her. After months of nothing but Poker-Face Thorne, it's not a relief to finally meet Sarcastic Thorne, Pissed-Off Thorne, and what's probably Scared Thorne. He runs through a quick ddx in his head but nothing makes sense. Aggravation, irritability, perhaps photophobia, which points to, well, _hangover_, but she's not the type to drink and that doesn't account for why she's afraid. There are other diagnoses, of course, but each raises more questions than it answers.

"Oh, come on, use that giant diagnostician brain of yours to figure it out. 'S not that complicated." She unlocks Richmond's office and practically storms in, throwing her stack of pink slips on his desk. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to be in the ER." And then he sees it, the slight sloppiness in how those slips land on Richmond's desk, the fact that she doesn't straighten them. Her coordination is off. Not by much, and really it's still much better than average, but he's seen the razor-sharp preciseness she operates with and she's usually OCD and perfectly exact.

He grabs her arm as she stalks by. "You're in no shape to be operating right now." Her precision is why her patients come to her. Even when she's dead tired, when she hasn't slept for two days, she's beautifully precise. But not now. Maybe that's why she's afraid – he knows that Mary Hawthorne would be lost without her career.

She lowers her sunglasses a bit and gives him a look, and he can see that her sclera, the part of her eye that's supposed to be white, is now bright yellow. "Exactly. I'm the patient," she replies, before walking away. "It's in about forty minutes."

But he catches up with her and stops her with a hand on her arm. "It's been, like, what, only three years since last time?"

"Yeah, so?" she replies, the words bitterly sarcastic. She doesn't seem surprised that he's read her medical files.

"You take care of yourself. You're not even diabetic anymore and you want me to believe that LS's causing your liver to fail three years after you got a shiny new one?" Of course, liver failure explains everything, but nothing explains liver failure.

"Well, yes," she replies, turning away from him, wrenching her arm out of his grasp.

He watches her walk away, and then turns around, wishing for a cane to play with. Precision. Thorne's precise, and so is the body, most of the time. Antibodies are precise...unless they aren't and _of course, exactly that has to be it._

The patient's not particularly happy about being woken this early, but hey, at least he as a diagnosis.

* * *

><p>Wilson takes care of the car rental, and while he's in the little office, signing papers, Cuddy and Brad sit together in the small car, Rachel between them.<p>

"He crashed his car into your house," Brad says. He's still trying to convince her that this is a bad idea.

"He's the best doctor I know," she replies, holding onto Rachel's small little hand.

Brad opens his mouth to speak, but he's interrupted by Rachel. "Mummy, why are we here?" she asks.

"We're going to see an old friend of mine, House," Cuddy says, and Brad sighs. "He's a good doctor. He'll be able to tell why you're sick."

Rachel coughs. "House?" she asks. She can pronounce his name correctly now.

"Yes. Dr. House. Do you remember him?"

Rachel shakes her head no. Of course she didn't.

"I still don't think this is a good idea," Brad says. "Didn't you say he relapsed, on Vicodin?"

Yes, House had relapsed, but she knows that he's still by far the best doctor she's ever known. "He was on Vicodin for years while he worked for me," she says, "and his department was still the best of the East Coast."

Brad sighs again. "I guess, if you trust him," he says, and she can extrapolate the words he didn't say: _but I don't._

Wilson returns, and he takes the first shift driving, and Cuddy sits in the back, holding onto her daughter.

* * *

><p>The last person Foreman expects to see is a certain good-looking blonde surgeon, but Chase is here, standing in the DDX room, shifting slightly between one foot and the other. "I'm ready to come back to work, now," he says.<p>

"Welcome back," Foreman says, simply. Chase has worked for House for longer than he has, and he knows they both share the same fear – that they'll become Gregory House, with all his misanthropy, all his arrogance.

And sometimes he sees the similarities between the surgeon and the diagnostician.

And he always sees the similarities between the diagnostician and himself.

But he knows that neither of them would ever crash a car into someone's house on purpose. Sure, Chase might have killed Dibala, but he was no House.

And Foreman knows, _knows _that Chase had to take time off to convince himself of that fact.

But there's nothing more he can say to the other man, other than, "New case."

* * *

><p>The team's on edge – Ashley and Michaels are exchanging glances every five seconds and Dr. Young obviously has no clue what's going on but he knows enough to not ask questions. House drops the case file on the conference room's table and picks up a dry erase marker. "New case. Sudden kidney failure, vague claims of back pain, and fatigue. Go."<p>

If he'd given this case to Foreman and Chase, he'd probably get a reply somewhat along the lines of _that's a case? The _janitor _could solve that one. _But Ashley, Michaels, and Young aren't that type of forward with him, and although he can tell that all of them would much rather be elsewhere, they give him a pretty decent ddx. In five minutes, he's got a whiteboard covered in ideas, some of them plausible (from Young), most of them crap (from Ashley and Michaels).

He tells Young to run another blood panel and waits for him to head off. Then House turns to Ashley and Michaels. "Forty-year old woman, with Lawrence-Seip's, presents with total liver failure three years post-transplant."

"I'm not diagnosing Thorne," Ashley says. Michaels bites his lower lip in an half-assed attempt at a proper poker face. They're both worried – he can see it in their eyes. None of them believe that Thorne's LS is the reason why she suddenly lacks a functional liver. It's about four years too soon, for one, and for the second, Thorne's been better about managing her condition, eating the right things at the right times, working out often, not letting herself run ragged as much.

It's also perfectly clear that they both have information they aren't willing to share.

House makes a couple more attempts at getting information out of the pair, but when he's unsuccessful, House orders Ashley to biopsy Mr. Needs New Kidney's current pair of kidneys and tells Michaels to keep an eye on his wife "since I need those skilled hands of hers."

Michaels glares a bit at that comment – he's a bit sensitive when it comes to comments about his "wife" – but he leaves without a word.

Sighing, House pulls out an oversized tennis ball – his new oversized tennis ball that he bought with Thorne's money – and tosses it against the wall a few times. It usually helps him think, but this time he knows that he doesn't have enough information. House pulls out his laptop and opens up some porn in one workspace before quickly switching to another and vpn'ing through a private server he'd set up, hidden in the walls of his old apartment. Thank Steve Jobs for keyboard shortcuts, makes workspace switching really fast and snooping on your secretive boss and coworkers just a tad bit easier. Turning the speakers up just enough so someone standing nearby could overhear, he sets about trawling for more information about Thorne.

It doesn't take long for Ashley to return. "Vitamin C overdose, it probably crystallized oxalate in his kidneys," she says from the doorway.

House quickly switches to the porn and pauses it. "There's no way the results from that biopsy are back that quickly."

She holds up the small timer she's carrying. "Waiting for stains to wash out, but he had firecupping scars all over his back, and he kept on blabbing about homeopathy and coffee enemas and shit like that. I know this type – thinks that supplements are everything and modern medicine is poison, and totally things that downing insane amounts of vitC is a good idea."

House just stares at her. "You do realize that you'd need something like sixteen grams of Vitamin C to overdose, right? It's water-soluble."

Ashley's saved by the timer, and House goes back to trying to hack into Thorne's affairs.

There's a bank account he knows about, of course, and there's plenty of money in that one (of course, Thorne draws a surgeon's salary and practically has no expenses outside of food and her apartment) but he's pretty sure there are bank accounts he doesn't know about. He peeks through Thorne's investments and they look legit – mostly mutual funds, some bonds, low-maintenance stuff. Really nothing strange or interesting.

Thorne has a resume publicly available, but he's already checked that out completely and of course it checks out. There _was _someone by the name of Mary Hawthorne at UCLA and at Stanford and at Columbia, all at the right times, but then again he's checked and there was someone by the name of Charles Walker at MIT and Johns Hopkins too, or at least that's what the records show.

He does manage to find some pictures though, of what might be a pre-LS Thorne, although the purple-and-blue streaked hair makes him doubt it. The Thorne he knows might be a ex-con, but she's also straight-laced and...well, downright boring and definitely not the type to have tricolor hair and metal all over her ears. He'll have to sneak down while Thorne's still out and check for piercings.

Absentmindedly, he searches through Thorne's life, wondering if there was even a point since Nalo probably could have scrubbed Thorne's online existence the way she created Walker's, Thorne keeps the crazy hair and the piercings until her last year of college, and then suddenly she's all business, hair dyed back to its natural black and no more earrings. Even before the LS, she's pretty thin, skin-and-bone-and-muscle. She goes to graduate school – Columbia – and by Jehovah her life is boring.

He's just about decided that this is pointless when he comes across the article. _"Hypersens: the End of Addiction?" _the title declares in garish 48pt font. And then the journalist tries to summarize the science and probably gets most of it wrong, and there's a couple of mangled quotes from Thorne: "...idea is to use someone's own immune system against...their addiction" and "the blood-brain barrier is notoriously hard to cross" which really could mean anything.

This is where he gets when Ashley returns. "There's oxalate crystallized in his kidneys but I asked him what supplements he took and it only adds up to like a gram, max, per day," she blurts out as soon as she's in the door. "Something else had to compromise his kidney function first."

"Go do an MRI," he snaps at her.

Ashley raises an eyebrow and gives him a stare that reminds him way too much of Lisa Cuddy. "Wait, what?"

"Go do an MRI," he repeats, slowly, as if she's an idiot.

"I'm assuming by that you actually mean 'Go get lost so I can continue snooping around.'" she snipes back. "And before you ask, yes we can tell you're vpning somewhere, and Nalo will have your key decrypted some time in the next twenty minutes or so. If all you're doing is googling 'Mary Jillian Hawthorne', you're better off doing it openly. And before you ask – you're using our routers and shit and I actually graduated from the school your resume claims you went to."

He should have figured he would get caught. "You know as well as I do that she's not giving us the whole picture," House replies. "She's sicker than she's letting on."

Ashley closes her eyes before replying. "Have you considered, _Dr. Walker_, that she just might be keeping stuff from you?"

"So." He stands up, towering over her. "You would rather let her die than tell me the truth."

Tucking her hands into her pockets, she looks down. "It's what she wants," she says. "Richmond's slowly killing her, but she won't leave here." Ashley bites the inside of her cheek. "Listen, Dr. House," she begins, "Thorne and Richmond and I...well, we're mixed up in a world you really don't want to get mixed up in. Michaels, well, I'm not quite sure why he hasn't left Thorne yet, but he's an innocent in this game, House." She pauses, and he waits, patiently. She's talking now, that's good. "Thorne...well, it's thanks to Thorne I'm still alive right now, but Thorne..." A sigh. "Don't get into Thorne's case, if you don't want to end up like her," Ashley blurts out. She tucks her hands into her pockets, shifting uncomfortably in the silence.

He lets the silence drag on, lets the awkwardness compel the young medical student into speech again.

"I don't know how Thorne fell into this game, but I do know that the game's...that the game's broken her." Ashley's words come out in a rush – it's obvious that she's saying something she's not supposed to. "The Thorne I knew ten, fifteen years ago wouldn't let herself die like this...but now, I don't know, I think...maybe, I'm not sure, I really don't know, _Ithinkshewantstodie._" A pause. Ashley nervously sweeps her bangs back behind an ear. "It can't be the LS – it's too early for the LS," she mutters quietly, "and I know – _know –_ she's hiding what it is from me." She sighs. "Don't cross Richmond – he doesn't want us treating Thorne, I think, he won't let me have her real file, and I'm practically her daughter."

The omnipresent timer goes off again, and Ashley curses loudly, muttering something along the lines of _gotta take the Western off the rotator _and she takes off and he doesn't follow. She's already given him another lead.

* * *

><p>Thorne does indeed have heavily pierced ears.<p>

She's still out from the anesthesia and she looks younger than she usually does, now that her brow's unfurrowed and her intense eyes are closed. Despite the crows feet developing at the corners of her eyes and the light strands of gray at her temples, she looks really young, her frail frame and large eyes, slightly defined by tattooed-on eyeliner and framed by L-shaped scars, making her look like a worn-down thirty-year-old and not the forty-ish she's supposed to be.

Thorne's a small woman – a very small woman. She can't be more than five-two, can't weigh more than eighty pounds soaking wet; her collarbones are very visible through a gap in the patient gown, the veins on the back of her hands visible too. It's easy to forget how tiny she is when she's awake, when she can wield her strong personality against the world.

House sighs. She might seem delicate when unconscious, but he knows she's far more dangerous than she lets on. He's seen little glimpses of that, from the way she effortlessly picks a lock to the way she just seems to _know _even when she shouldn't.

It's not going to be an easy case. He expects Thorne to fight him, every step of the way, but he's not going to let the surgeon die without a diagnosis.

* * *

><p><em>Thorne hates anesthesia, for a reason. It makes her weak, vulnerable, open, it confuses her mind, it releases memories she'd rather not remember.<em>

_She vaguely remembers asking them to use as little as possible, but still she feels like she's floating in the middle of nowhere. She tries to focus on faces, but she can't._

"You're no fun anymore, Jillian."

_Go the fuck away, she thinks. Go the fuck away._

_She concentrates on glycolysis in her mind, and then the citric acid cycle, and then _"You're not the daughter I raised, Mary" _and _"You do know that you need help, right?" _and _"If you continue down this path, Mary, you'll die" _verses _"You never want to do anything anymore, Jillian. You just stay at home all day and read that fucking biochemistry book."

..._and then she's floating in a world of memories and they're taking over and she's trying her best to run from them, run away from them and the wind's in her hair and her sneakers are on her feet and she's running, running away._

_And maybe this time she'll successfully escape her demons._

* * *

><p>It's lunchtime, House realizes, as he heads out of the ICU. He heads off towards the cafeteria, buys himself a nice plate of Indian food with Thorne's credit card, and eats. His current patient, the guy with crystals in his kidneys, isn't that particularly interesting. Ashley's probably right about him – a simple case of vitamin C overdose on top of already weak kidneys, nothing more.<p>

He eats, quickly, without the distraction of his GameBoy, his intellect happily occupied with a new case who's name happened to be Mary Jillian Hawthrone. After lunch, House crosses the hospital again, intent on getting into the records. Ashley had let slip that Thorne apparently had a "real" patient file that probably didn't bear her real name, and he's probably best off trying to find that first.

Of course, he has to cross the damned lobby of the hospital in order to access the record room in the basement. He doesn't like it on a good day – it's usually filled with obnoxious patients and crying children. There's the information desk, of course, with its line of idiots and hypochondriacs, and standing next to it is a thin woman with brown curly hair. He can't really see much of her – just a glimpse of that hair and a bit of brown leather jacket, but he'd recognize his med student anywhere.

"Ashley," he yells, and he doesn't get any further before the woman turns around, and he can see the toddler perched on her hip.

* * *

><p>The hospital tries to be pleasant in the way that all hospitals do, with potted plants, blue wall paint, wood paneling, but it's a hospital so she can still feel the sickness and death looming, the worry and the stress thick enough to be cut with a knife. The air is both sterile and clammy, and Cuddy wonders how she's managed to work in such an atmosphere for so long.<p>

Maybe it's different when you weren't the doctor.

(House would say that she hasn't been a doctor for a long time. She's an administrator.)

Brad insisted on holding her hand, and she's got Rachel propped up on a hip. Her adopted daughter's getting heavy – she doesn't know how long she can continue to carry her in this way. Rachel sniffles a bit, coughs, looks nervously around the hospital.

"Mommy, why are we here?"

"We're visiting House, remember, dear," she replies, squeezing Brad's hand, partially for comfort, partially to tell him to keep his mouth shut.

The line inches forward a bit.

"Who's House?" Rachel asks.

"He's an old friend of mine," Cuddy repeats. "He's a doctor, he's one of the best doctors I know."

Behind her, Wilson clears his throat. She knows he doesn't think that coming here was a good idea, either, but at least he's keeping his mouth shut about that.

And then the line inches forward a bit more, and a bit more, and they wait, silent, with the exception of a couple of coughs and sniffles from Rachel. Family member after family member walk up to the information desk, where they're told where to go in order to find their sick loved ones by a tired-looking nurse.

And then suddenly she's face to face with this nurse. "I'm here to see Dr. Walker," Cuddy says.

"Dr. Walker isn't seeing any new patients," the nurse replies, tiredly. "Next!"

She's about to raise her voice, about to ask again when she hears his voice, calling a name that's not her own, but she turns around anyways. First thing she sees is a potted plant, and then she sees the hem of a crumpled blue dress shirt and a bit of black t-shirt, and she's looking at House's bright blue eyes through that potted plant.

"House," she says, instinctively.

And then he bolts.

She follows.

First thing she notices is that he's not using the cane. He's walking, almost running, as smoothly as he did right after the ketamine treatment, and with Rachel on her hip she can barely keep up. Brad taps her on the shoulder and she gratefully hands over Rachel and tries to keep up with House's long-limbed pace as best as she can in five inch heels. He turns, she follows, he heads up the stairs, she tries to run up them, tries to avoid spraining an ankle.

She's somewhat surprised when he suddenly turns into a corridor that's nothing but labs, and then left turn and she's staring into the face of a woman who could almost be her doppelgänger. Same hair, same eyes, wearing unstylish puke-green scrubs, off-white lab coat and beat-up gray sneakers.

"Walker?" the doppelgänger asks with a raised eyebrow. "What are you doing here?"

"Cuddy, this is Ashley Marshall, my resident. Ashley, Lisa Cuddy, my ex." House introduces them as if he hasn't just spent the last five minutes running from Cuddy. (As if he never crashed his car into her house.)

Strange as this situation is, Cuddy's never without her manners, so she extends her hand to Ashley with a "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too," Ashley replies, raising her hands in the universal _I'd like to shake your hand, but I'm kind of wearing gloves right now _gesture_. _She caps the tube she's holding and puts it down. "What do you want, Dr. _Walker_?" she practically hisses, and Cuddy catches the slight emphasis on the last word.

"Just a bit of your unfailingly cherry company," House replies. "Kidney Guy number five at the least is still dying and you choose to hang around here moving microvolumes water around?"

"Look, Walker," Ashley says, "I kind of have work to do right now since Thorne will be out of commission for a while and I need to keep her lab running."

"Thorne has other post-docs, Ashley."

Listening to their conversation, Cuddy gets the impression that Ashley is House's handler, that he's here because they – Arianne Credin and her lackeys – won't let him talk to her without one of them present. Ashley's not Arianne, that she can tell, since the former banker's nearly six feet tall and Ashley's about five-five, five-six, maybe.

"You have fellows, and Kidney Guy needs a surgeon, not an immunologist."

There's something strange about the bickering, yes, something rehearsed. A code, maybe, she didn't know. "Where's your cane, House?" she interrupts.

Cuddy doesn't miss the glance Ashley and House shoot each other before House answers, "Doctors here don't deny pain patients the pills they need."

"Methadone?" It was not really a question.

House opens his mouth to answer, but he's interrupted by the door opening, and a middle-aged man in a charcoal suit enters, pushing a wheelchair that seems, at first, to contain nothing but blankets. But then Cuddy seems the small frame wrapped in those blankets, a tiny pale woman with dark hair. There's an IV pole attached to the wheelchair.

"No," the woman replies. "He's not on methadone."

"Thorne!" Ashley says, "aren't you supposed to be in the ICU?"

"This is more important," the woman in the wheelchair – Thorne – replies, and then she says something else, something that's clearly not English.

Ashley replies, quietly, in the same language, and the two women converse for a while. Cuddy looks over at the middle-aged man, who doesn't seem surprised, and at House, who doesn't seem to comprehend the conversation either, but he's just standing there, silently, waiting for them to finish, almost as if he's used to things like this.

Cuddy knows that she's playing with fire, here, and these two women are part of the flames. She has no doubt that they're part of the group that's managed to successfully hide House from the police, that's managed to make Arianne Credin disappear. She doesn't really care, though, she just wants to know what's wrong with her daughter, and there's only one man alive who can tell her that.

"Take her to the basement," Thorne finally says. "Find the two men who were with her, take them down there, too. Scan them." Her pale blue eyes are cold, calculating. "Make sure they don't have any bugs on them."

"Are you sure?" the man asks, as he begins to wheel Thorne out.

"Yes," she replies, "and I can wheel myself."

* * *

><p>Cuddy wasn't supposed to be able to find him. Cuddy wasn't supposed to be here.<p>

House leads the way, not quite sure where's he's going, and Cuddy's following him, her heals loud against the cheap linoleum. Ashley follows behind her with silent footsteps, occasionally calling out directions, "left" or "right" in curt words.

They had promised him a new identity, one away from his old life, but now Cuddy's here, standing in front of him with her long curly hair and excellent breasts and five-inche heels and she's still as beautiful as he remembered.

House knows two things. One: he still loves Lisa Cuddy, and two: loving her had brought out sides of him he didn't really want to acknowledge, didn't want to be part of him.

Vaguely, he can hear Cuddy trying to ask Ashley questions, and Ashley curtly brushing off those questions.

What House remembers most is crashing his car into Cuddy's home.

And he's managed to build up a life here, build up a fantasy life that both is away from her and includes her, in a way, in the form of Krystal pretending to be her, a stripped-down less demanding version of her. But now she's here, and he can feel that fantasy life shattering.

And now they're headed to a place he's never been before, deep in the hospital and Ashley's face is grim and serious as she directs their way and House has no clue what's going on, only that he's pretty sure they won't do Cuddy any harm, no from the little he's seen that's not their style. Two right turns and they end up in a small room somewhere in the subbasements. Ashley closes the door, locks it, says something that sounds like "niche" but probably wasn't. And then a piece of stainless steel closes over the wall with the door and the room _moves_.

"I need you to hand over all of your electronics, Dr. Cuddy," Ashley says, quietly.

Cuddy looks over at him, and he shrugs a bit. He doesn't have any clue what's going on, didn't know about the existence of this strange moving room deep in the bowels of the hospital, but he's learned to expect the unexpected here. These people here, these people he now works with, they've managed to clone entire organs, this mobile room is nothing.

She hands over her electronics: her iPhone, her iPad, and at Ashley's insistence, the pen with the MP3 recorder.

When the room docks and the stainless steel sinks back into the floor, he's not surprised to see Michaels, standing there on the other side, but he's surprised to see Wilson. There's another man, too, a man who House doesn't recognize. Ashley steps out of the room; House and Cuddy follow, and the stainless steel plate slides up again and he can hear the sounds of the room leaving behind it. The room they're standing is sparely decorated, with plain white walls, cheap linoleum flooring, some industrial shelving over black tables.

"Lisa?" the strange man asks. "What are you doing here?"

"Brad!" Cuddy replies. "Where's Rachel? What are _you _doing here?"

"This doesn't concern the kid, Dr. Cuddy," Michaels says, quietly. "She's being watched by Jonathan."

At Cuddy's questioning glance, he fills in, "One of Thorne's grad students." As far as he knew, the young man was trustworthy, good with children, and not involved with this mess.

"He's not one of us, Dr. Cuddy," Ashley says. "Your daughter is safe. No harm will come to any of you." She exchanges a glance with Michaels – this is a side of them House has never seen before but has always somewhat suspected. They are, after all, close to Thorne.

The stainless steel panel slides down again, revealing Thorne, in her wheelchair. Michaels gets into the moving room as Thorne rolls herself out, and then the stainless steel panel rolls back up and the room leaves again.

Thorne smiles; it's pretty much one of the first smiles House's seen on Thorne. "Welcome to my lair," she says.

* * *

><p>"I don't think I've introduced myself properly," Thorne says, holding her hand out to Cuddy. "My name is Mary Hawthorne, most people call me Thorne."<p>

"Lisa," Cuddy replies, shaking Thorne's hand. "Nice to meet you," she says.

"Nice to meet you, too." Thorne wheels herself backwards, "Would you like any cookies? Pretzels? Water?"

And surely enough Cuddy can hear engines moving, can see a table and some stools rise out of the floor, and small six-legged robots carrying water and snacks on their backs appear, carefully fly their way onto the table, and set things down. She cautiously sits down on a stool but doesn't eat anything, and after a moment House does too, on Cuddy's right, followed by Ashley, who grabs a cup of water and takes a large gulp. Thorne leans forward slightly, still smiling, and only then do Brad and Wilson gingerly take a seat each, Brad to her left, Wilson to House's right.

"What's this all about, Thorne?" House asks, gesturing to the robots and the table and everything. "What's with all the theatrics?"

"She's not stupid, Dr. House," Thorne replies. "She'd figure it out, eventually. If we tell her, we can make sure she keeps her silence."

"Tell me what?" Cuddy asks. "About Arianne?"

Thorne laughs; it's not a pleasant laugh. "No. About how we fixed his leg."

* * *

><p><strong>AN<strong>: Apparently Random (the dorm at MIT) does indeed have a computer server hidden in one of the walls, and it used to work.

I'm basing Ashley's labwork off of my own, which probably doesn't resemble most people's labwork, but meh I picture Ashley to be as much of a workaholic as myself and the omnipresent timer is something I definitely did.

Although, really, the Western could probably have hung around on the rotator for the next hour and everything probably would have been fine.

[And next chapter will be up...um...when I have time to write it. Which might take a while...sorry!]


End file.
